Stellar Uses Blockchain To Provide Basic Banking Services In The Third World

One of the biggest problems in banking today is the growing need to transfer money overseas in a safe way. Using a standard network means not only going through intermediaries for transfers, but also crossing fingers that fraud or hacks won’t occur.

While we often tuck away these concerns out of convenience, we all know the elephant is still in the room. With blockchain technology, the potential is there to remove these problems. You’re starting to see many inroads, with one of the most notable being a platform called Stellar.

What is Stellar?

There isn’t anything better than a platform potentially living up to its name. Stellar is a non-profit company using an open-source system for international financial transactions. It uses blockchain technology as its foundation to make these transactions more transparent and secure.

At the same time, it uses its own currency initially named after the company, and now called Lumens. This moves things along in the world of cryptocurrency, something long stuck in a niche area for online financials.

The aim of Stellar is to send currency to third-world companies in a way that’s easy and safe. They’ve already teamed up with a software company called Oradian to help funnel money through banks in places like Nigeria. Through various recent partnerships, they’ll provide a solid infrastructure for exchanging money in a way efficiently funneling money into poor countries.

Prior to this, many of these countries had to literally smuggle money in through baggage on buses.

Stellar’s Most Recent Partnership and Expansion

Since Stellar began several years ago, we’ve seen them expand exponentially to help the blockchain movement evolve even faster. Founded by renowned crytocurrency entrepreneur Jed McCaleb, they’ve recently added an additional company called Lightyear.io to act as their global currency exchange network.

Lightyear is going to link with Stellar’s blockchain technology to reinforce all money transfers to developing countries. Thanks to Stellar having previous partnerships with the Philippines, India, and Africa, they’ll have a wide reach in places where banking services like wiring and money exchanges are far too complicated. The biggest liability in this area is the fees associated with digital money transfers.

As Fortune notes above:

“With Stellar’s open financial protocol, transactions are settled in almost real-time (3-5 seconds), for fractions of a cent, in a safe and secure network.”

For businesses and families overseas who need money quickly from others, it’s going to improve the economy exponentially in these regions.

Stellar’s Lightyear.io also has backing with payment behemoth Stripe. The latter company wants to connect with blockchain technology to find merchants in untapped overseas markets.

What’s most interesting is blockchain has a stronger chance to become mainstream in these countries as they bypass our traditional digital transaction methods. Regardless, it’s a good bet blockchain is going to become mainstream collectively worldwide by the 2020s.